Forbes, in conjunction with a quantitative analysis firm called Audit Integrity, recently ranked the most trustworthy publicly traded companies in America. Audit Integrity uses a quantitative metric score to assess the risk of a company’s accounting policies and corporate governance practices that they call the Accounting and Governance Risk rating. The assessment uses data from income statements and balance sheets along with more than 100 qualitative factors to create the rating.

We all love lists, but is a single-risk measure a good thing? And, while I like to think that there are useful consolidated metrics that could be used for assessing risk, the synthesis and interpretation of metrics still requires an experienced hand and qualitative judgment.

But even so, I guess we can take strange comfort in knowing that someone, somewhere, is crunching our rev rec policy into a statistical model.

When RoseRyan made the decision to initiate a company blog and asked for volunteers, I found my hand going up of its own volition. After all, I knew something about blogging—I had watched Julie and Julia. Twice. Then, in a panic, I immediately did some research on blogs so I wouldn’t look entirely clueless. Did you know that blog stands for web log? As part of my preparation, I read all kinds of blogs and found they ran the gamut of technical communications to online diaries. Some were great sources of information and some were just embarrassing.

So what’s the big deal with blogs, and why do we do them? I have found that they are a great way to provide information and to communicate with those who are like minded; it’s a way for us to voice our opinions to this interconnected world. In this day and age of social  media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn) we have to continue to move with the times or be left behind.

More important, I think that for you, the reader, blogs not only provide information, they also provide a view into the company, or person, writing them. They provide you with a look at our collective brain, our interests and values, and insight into what makes us, and our company, who we are. Looking at the posts of my colleagues, I am impressed by the breadth of technical content, the willingness to share our knowledge and the ability to provide straight forward analysis of the accounting issues facing companies today. We blog about the joys of flexible work hours, the ability to provide solutions to our clients, and the reasons we would rather be consultants.

Our Gurus Unaudited blog clearly reflects who we are, both as people and as a company: communicators, problem solvers, analyzers of technical issues, and  a team that is there for our clients. The big deal about blogging is staying current, finding another way to make a connection, to show you who we are, and to provide you with answers about issues and about us. I can’t begin to assess what you think about blogs, but raising my hand to volunteer has certainly opened a whole new set of doors for me.

We’re pleased to report that the RoseRyan Finance Pro Personality Quiz is an unqualified success. We sent the quiz—a tongue-in-cheek assessment—as our New Year’s gift to clients, partners and others on January 4. Lots of people have taken it, and they’re not only getting insight into their true finance personality, they’re laughing. Out loud. What could be a better way to start 2011?

In the first three days, the quiz increased traffic to our website by 400 percent over the average. The e-mail announcing the quiz is our most popular ever. (But then, most of our other e-mails alert recipients to our Intelligence reports, like the page-turners “Rev Rec’s Apples and Oranges” and “Make a Match Made in Heaven,” an M&A guide. We think these are fun too, but we are geeks.)

The quiz has taken hold with folks from FEI, Digital CFO and the Finance Leaders Association—organizations we love and belong to, but they’re not known for their stand-up routines. “I love this!! Who says financial people don’t have a sense of humor!!” was one of the many unsolicited responses we received. Another: “Whoa!!! Everyone needs to take this quiz—it’s great fun with incredible insight into ‘you’!”

Long way to say, if you haven’t taken the quiz yet, you still can. Just go here. If you like it, let your friends know.

It was heartening to see the January 8 New York Times article, “Flex Time Flourishes in Accounting Industry.” Work/life balance in the finance field is at the core of RoseRyan: When I co-founded the firm in 1993, I was looking to get off the 60- to 65-hour-a-week treadmill myself (which ironically didn’t happen for me personally, but it’s a main feature of the firm for our gurus). We truly “walk the talk” on this issue. We instituted flextime in 1996 and at last count 35 percent of our workforce was taking advantage of it.

I’m certain that’s why are able to attract and retain top-shelf finance talent. Generally speaking, we find that seasoned professionals seek sustainable work weeks, and they see this gift of time as a remarkable perk. (I also wrote on this very topic in a different post in response to a recent article in CFO Magazine that lamented the perils of flextime for CFOs.)